Tag: Website

Ulta’s first Hackathon

This year Ulta teamed up with the Google Cloud Chicago team to create a fun challenge for our first-ever hackathon! The hackathon was part of the Dare Mighty Things conference, if you’re unfamiliar with this great Chicago conference, check out http://daremightythings.co. McDonald’s co-sponsored the event and graciously hosted the hackathon at their Chicago headquarters – my dream of having unfeathered access to their fountain drink machines came to fruition!

We supplied the participants with multiple sample data files, representing our complete product catalog, store inventory, and store details and challenged them to create a voice-powered experience. The winners would receive up to 5 Google Stadia Founder’s Edition package.

Of the 53 teams involved, 15 chose to work on our challenge and we were delighted with the results. Some of the entries included: Google Assitant for Ulta, Product Recommendation for Ulta, Speech Analysis Platform to make Conversation Smarter.

Using query params we can instruct Scene7 to construct a dynamic image for us. The above example creates a single composition from two images. You can see things like background color, opacity, image source, and size.

In the above example I’m making the middle layer slight smaller to maintain a safe area/margin. Scene7 will scale from center, but there is also an anchor point option if needed.

Photos of the train with the shell off:

Video overview of a Photoshop extension I built to help with some common workflows for our photo studio folks at work. Built entirely in HTML/JavaScript using any code editor of your choice (e.g. not using eclipse and that adobe provided tooling)

Use the resource below to get started. Some key callouts I learned in development:

I’ve been wanting to experiment with epoxy resin for awhile and I finally found some wildflowers from the local forest Preserve that I run in frequently. They made the perfect subject to create a balanced and visually stunning composition.

I also wanted to add a technical touch, so I embedded in the bottom layer of the epoxy a NFC chip. See the video below!

Bottom, NFC coil up close

NFC coil cont.

NFC in action. Most Android phone / iPhone XS and later support background tag reading.

Fresh off of building PTSExplorer.com I had some inquires about building an adaption for a kiosk or exhibition. I was excited by the challenge and below is what I built in a night to show my vision of what that could look like.

The iPad app uses the didConnectNotification from UIScreen to detect when a secondary screen is connected, via HDMI or AirPlay. Once a second screen is detected at runtime I programmatically create another window with a root view controller from a storyboard.

Concrete + Wood table project. Was building this right before my kids were born for my new house, however I wanted to redo the concrete and then the girls were born so this got tabled (pun intended). Wood was a beautiful piece of hickory I sourced from Tennessee. Gaps in concrete were for bowties, which would have been routed out of the slab as well.

Creating the form

Post concrete pour and vibration

Hickory slab from Tenneesee

Office train shelf I built with my dad – metal studs and drywall. Corner pieces CNC’d MDF. Shelf was hollow to easily run wires, and work on track sections.

The girl’s nursery. I painted the accent wall, applied the star decals, sewed the mobiles, and hung the chandelier.

Coffee mug I designed to commiserate the release of a major Android app at Walgreens. Illustrations on the back were done by the amazing Enrique Sanchez.Animation I was working on for More cupcake app, never finished but always loved it.

Stripped and repainted Chicago CTA cars

two tone finish – they came from the factory with a YellowBook graphic!

One of my favorite things about the model train hobby is getting to experiment with my love for hardware and code. One day I was playing with a crossing system I bought from a big retailer and quickly became frustrated with its shortcomings, I literally had an “ah hah” moment when I realized I could create my own, pretty easily.

The video below describes in detail why I decided to build my own, and how I went about doing it. I go over different “activation methods” and why I chose to go with sonar over voltage or light.

One additional thing I did was add a BLE chip so I could control the whole system with my smart phone (luckily I know a good iOS developer to build the app).

One day a few of my peers on the creative team came to me with a request/challenge – could I build a Sketch plugin that streamlines keeping image assets up-to-date in their comps? After a few iterations, I believe I settled on a solution for them, see the [narrated] video below for details.

assign local/remote URLs to image layers

data is saved at the document level and persists (see sketch file format for more info about this)